JWG

Busy Weekend is an understatement

April 23rd, 2007

This weekend was the annual NEFFA folk festival. It took place at the Mansfield, MA High and Middle Schools for the first time; it had been at Natick for many years.

At this festival there is lots of Contra Dancing, English Country dancing, other forms of folk dance and music (including ShapeNote singing) , crafts sales, and food. This is a huge event; 6-8000 people attend.

Our dance organizations, LCFD and its affiliates, ran an Italian Food Booth as we have done for several years. The profits (we don't know how much we made) go to help pay for bands, callers, and rent and some of the organizations, particularly our English Country Dance couldn't survive without the extra funds (I know this since I am its treasurer, as well as the LCFD treasurer). We had lots of volunteers such that there were several people working in the kitchen and 4 or 5 people at the booth at all times . Setup started at 2:30 Friday afternoon; we went to midnight on Friday and Saturday and finished cleaning up a bit after 6 on Sunday; tarting time was ~9am on Friday and Saturday. We sold pasta with or without meat or veggie balls; marinara, butter, or pesto; eggplant parmagian and ravioli (these from a local restaurant); salad; cookies, muffins, made-there scones, iced tea, lemonade, coffee, tea), hard-boiled eggs and probably something else I forgot.

Chris Ricciotti, our Queen Mum, was the chief organizer and head chef, (and at the last minute he accepted the additional responsibility for Kitchen Manager which got us some extra volunteers). It was a lot of hard work, but most of us (even Chris) got time for some really nice dancing. I worked more hours than I expected, as did a lot of people. Various dancers who showed up pitched in and helped. It was a good cause, people had a good time working there and everyone was very cheerful.

I am still somewhat exhausted - particular since standing a long time is tough on my feet. Never the less we are about to go to Gloucester for the afternoon to do some work there since the water was turned on and there is lots of stuff to do.

At this festival there is lots of Contra Dancing, English Country dancing, other forms of folk dance and music (including ShapeNote singing) , crafts sales, and food. This is a huge event; 6-8000 people attend.

all right, all right, i see i am being trolled for. some year i need a two month heads up and i should visit for this!

If I am reincarnated I am not going to run a restaurant!

initially i didn't see the "not" and i thought, oh dear, john has finally lost his mind!

The new venue was fine. I was there at early setup time, but by the time it started it felt and looked a lot like the previous one. The inside of schools are often pretty similar.

This place had two auditoriums and two good sized gyms for dancing so there was more dancing and performing space compared to the previous place with one auditorium and the second gym being smaller.

One of the potential problems is that the this venue is two schools on the same campus but you have to go outside to get from one to another. The weather was great so it wasn't a problem; had it rained it would have been a pain - maybe they'll figure out some tent/canopy solution for the future.

The organizers (i know some of them) had to work pretty hard to pull this off and they were pretty anxious about the whole thing. They seemed pretty pleased as to how it worked out.